Die Rose
by coeurgryffondor
Summary: Never in all his centuries had he had a mistress like this one. / Austria/OFC, past Austria/Hungary, and France along with other cameos. WWI to present.


Author's note: From the ongoing series of nations incarnate contrasted by mortals, I give you Austria with the woman mentioned in a couple previous stories (especially « Something he was not looking for »). I like her so you may start seeing her a lot, and I won't regret any of it; neither will Austria.

* * *

**Die Rose**

As Roderich awakens this morning he finds Francis already sitting on the edge of his bed, holding one of his hands and stroking his face. The French nation leans down slowly before pressing his lips chastely to Roderich's and murmuring, "The divorce was finalized yesterday."

The Austrian nods, closing his eyes and sighing. All that was left was for the world to reclaim the nation created so long ago in central Europe, and Roderich Edelstein would return to the dust from which he had been created as well.

"I must return to Paris," Francis murmurs and Roderich nods, waving him away. "There is someone here to tend to you, while I am gone."

"I am not a child," the brunet murmurs. Francis's hand runs down his thin chest.

"Good; a child could never appreciate this particular gift," and with that the French republic leaves.

* * *

Today when he wakes, the once-great nation finds a woman sitting on the chest at the foot of his bed. Her hair is long and dark and curly, what little skin he can see pale and creamy. Her clothes are in the height of fashion though the metallic clip holding back a few strands of hair seems old.

Francis's gift indeed.

"What do you know?" Roderich asks quietly. At his words the young lady's head perks up, unbelievably gray eyes falling on him laying in bed.

Her smile is small. "Good morning Mr. Edelstein," she whispers in quiet German with just a subtle French accent. "All was calm in Austria during the night I believe, so you should be feeling much better this morning."

"Hmm." So he'd told her already; Roderich would ask later as to why and when. "If you know what I am called, what am I then to call you?"

Rising the woman walks delicately to the side of his bed, resting gingerly on its edge as Francis had more fully done days ago. The woman's nails are a deep red, a single red piece of string tied around her wrist. Beyond that she is modestly decorated, her deep purple dress looking more appropriate perhaps for a funeral than a wellness call.

And yet Roderich would dare to say that she was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in all his life. Perhaps no one else would agree with him, but the Austrian somehow adored what he saw.

"My name, Sir, is Hannah Sibylle Rose." The woman bows her head.

"And you are how old, Miss Rose?"

"I am nineteen, Sir." Meaning she was born in 1900: she was the child.

"You are French."

"I was raised in France, yes, though my parents, brother, and I are originally from Vienna."

"Oh? And why did you leave?"

"We were afraid, Sir." The lady's head is still down; Roderich wants so badly to grab her face and force her to look up, to gaze into those gray eyes again.

"Of what?"

She shakes her head and says nothing.

* * *

The double doors to the garden open, Roderich watches from his bed as Francis and the young lady speak quickly beside a bed of flowers. Her eyes constantly falling on the Austrian are intriguing before the French nation steps inside. "Have you finished deciding my fate, oh Holy One?" Roderich says with a bored tone that makes Francis snicker.

"I love when you talk condescendingly to me Roderich." The Austrian pulls a face. "No I have not, though I have decided two things."

"Shall I write them down?"

"First, stop asking Sibylle why her family left Austria: the answer is none of your business, lacks any intrigue, and is simply what humans do. They move." Roderich takes note of Francis's possessive tone for later. "Second, Sibylle will be staying with you here until you are well once more and can return to Vienna."

"And if I am never that well again?"

From the door the woman watches, her gray eyes moving between the two men. Roderich's fingers itch to stroke her cheek the way they itch to play the piano.

His fellow nation sighs. "Ludwig may never repay the debts he owes, Gilbert is all but dead, and Erzsébet will never be yours again." At the sound of his ex-wife's name the woman had perked up, saddened as if she was jealous of what the Hungarian once had. "But you, my dear Roderich Edelstein–" Francis takes his hand and so drags Austrian eyes away from the woman "–will recover." Those lips kiss his forehead, his nose, then his mouth. The Austrian had let his eyes slip closed but as the Frenchman nuzzles his jaw he opens them to watch the woman.

In that moment they exchange a look of something deep and unspeakably powerful, and so Roderich accepts Francis's words.

* * *

Having to have one of Francis's hired servants carry him out into the garden is truly becoming a nuisance, Roderich torn between feeling embarrassed and enraged. "I am not getting any better," he complains tersely at the table.

A hand falls to his knee which he can barely feel. "Yes you are Roderich," Sibylle counters. After three weeks they are firmly on a first-name basis; while that sort of familiarity is uncommon to Roderich, there is something undeniable in this woman. He can imagine Francis having spent weeks looking for some woman to thrust at the Austrian in the hopes of sending him his next mistress.

It is a pity how right the man was in his choice, and how quickly thoughts of the Hungarian wife he once prized beyond everything else can leave his mind settled beside the beautiful Franco-Austrian who never challenges, only encourages.

"Perhaps," Sibylle starts, handing Roderich a piece of toast, "we should look into getting you a wheelchair."

"I would need an attendant to push it."

"No you wouldn't," she laughs lightly. "I would gladly push it, to make myself useful."

"You are very useful Sibylle dear," Roderich points out. "You tell Francis to go away for me and then distract him when he refuses."

The woman smiles with a youthfulness Roderich hasn't had since the fifteenth century, a hand reaching out without thinking to stroke her cheek. Sibylle's eyes fall closed, her face turning into the touch.

"You are very, very useful," the Austrian murmurs.

* * *

Firmly planted in the wheelchair and thrilled with the freedom it has returned to him (even if he still has difficulty getting in and out of it without Sibylle's assistance), Roderich enjoys the gentle breeze that blows through the garden. For a man who claimed Paris was where his heart was, Francis had a very exquisite house here just outside of Nice.

Stopping him before the small pond, Sibylle steps forward to look into its water, dropping crumbs in. Fish immediately come to the surface to eat up her offerings.

Her dresses are still modest though Roderich appreciates now how expensive her clothing is, surely all paid for by the nation of love himself. The light blue of her dress moves in the wind as she turns back, her hair messily but endearingly braided back with a cream ribbon running through the dark strands.

"Sibylle?" Roderich whispers.

"Yes?" She steps to him and holds out a hand that the Austrian takes, kissing it and looking up into her big, beautiful eyes.

"I want to make love to you Sibylle," he confesses which makes his young companion blush lightly.

"Roderich." Gingerly she moves to lean over him, her pale bosom eye-level for a moment before her lips find one of his ears. "You haven't even kissed me yet."

"Allow me to rectify that?"

Slowly, as if afraid of hurting him, Sibylle comes to rest sideways on his lap, her arms lightly draped around his neck. With all the ease and practice of a man once whispered of behind fans throughout European courts for his sexual prowess and romantic liaisons, the Austrian pulls her to him before cupping her face and pressing his lips to hers lightly. The kiss is small, short, before he steals a second, a third, then Sibylle takes the fourth and fifth. Her breasts press into his chest as they pull each other closer and his body makes no objection to that pressure.

* * *

Strength returning slowly, Roderich rests in his wheelchair beside the piano bench as Sibylle plays, correcting her in a way most would find offensive. It is a testament to how patient and understanding she is that the woman only smiles at his words or hand grabbing hers, listening attentively and learning quickly.

It is almost enough to restore Roderich's hope in humanity.

* * *

"Would you like to go to Switzerland?" Sibylle asks quietly over dinner. Spring had come and would soon be replaced with summer.

"What I would like and would not like," the Austrian says lamely, "no longer matters I feel."

A thin hand takes his thinner one, squeezing it. "You have been divided but you have not been destroyed."

"It is the natural course of things, my dear," and Roderich gives her one of his signature smiles that lacks life, lacks passion. "You should not become too attached to something as outdated as myself."

There's a pause where gray eyes stare at his plate, Sibylle saying nothing before announcing, "No."

"No?"

"No. You promised–" She blushes, licking her lips, before meeting his gaze again. "You promised you would make love to me, and I will not let you go without fulfilling that promise."

Intrigued Roderich continues with his dinner, chewing slowly and watching this extraordinary girl with extraordinary strength. Damn him for falling for a woman so like his Erzsi, and yet so different as well.

* * *

Stirring from his nap the great weight that for so long has sat upon his chest is gone. "The treaty has been signed," Sibylle whispers from her chair beside his bed, her head laying on his chest. "There is peace now."

* * *

The discomfort lasts for months, spoiling any plans of Sibylle and Francis's to try and move Roderich to a cane. It's not the worried glances of his long-time enemy that drive the Austrian crazier and crazier but rather his mistress's, because she deserves more than him and his constant complaints.

Yet Sibylle hasn't left his side for two years now, and Roderich can appreciate that sort of dedication in her. When he naps he often awakes to hear her playing at the piano, or perhaps setting up an early dinner for them to take in the French nation's garden. Francis stops in still as he goes to and from Monaco, recovering with his sister far from anyone else's eyes. But Roderich and Sibylle see and keep his secret as he keeps theirs.

In the library the woman often curls up at his feet, her head on his legs as she reads. She has awful penmanship that drives the Austrian republic crazy; on days where she writes letters he tends to stop her, writing whatever she dictates instead for something to do. And when letters come she reads them aloud for him.

"You will be receiving a loan," Sibylle informs him one such day, their hands intertwined. He's learned so much about this woman and yet still feels as if they are strangers. "I hope it will stabilize Austria."

"I hope so too," Roderich agrees.

* * *

His currency stabilized and his body recovered, Roderich knows there are a few important details to sort out before he returns to Vienna. The first is to ask if Sibylle would return with him; the second is to deliver on his promise and make love to her.

Under her favorite tree he finds the brunette napping, sitting awkwardly beside her and laying his cane down in the grass. He takes her hand in his and waits until she stirs, smacking her lips together and blinking into the harsh afternoon sunlight.

"How long was I– ahh, asleep," she yawns, her gray eyes meeting his deep violet ones.

"A little more than an hour," he smiles, stealing a kiss. They had done little beyond kisses and touches above the shoulder, Roderich afraid his body would not have the strength to perform and Sibylle blushing deeply. "I wished to speak with you, though, when you are ready."

"What about?"

"I know our life here is comfortable," the Austrian begins, "and I know it is none of my business as to why your family left my country. However, I must return; it is my duty, and I have been away far too long now. You understand."

"I do," Sibylle agrees.

"And I would understand if you wished to remain in France, with Francis. I still feel I must request, however, that you consider coming with me to Vien–"

"I want to go with you," the woman interrupts. Roderich blinks, having not expected that. "I knew you would always be set to return eventually, and I decided long ago that I wanted to go with you." Sibylle, now twenty-six and no longer the sweet child she once was caring for him, reaches out to stroke his cheek. Roderich, physically twenty-three, sighs.

"Thank you." He pulls Sibylle close and they embrace tightly.

* * *

While Sibylle had taken to sleeping beside him years earlier, their bodies rarely touched in the night. Roderich intends on changing that tonight, watching his mistress settle in under the sheets. "Ready?" she asks innocently before catching his carnal gaze.

He hums his agreement, crawling into bed before pulling Sibylle's head to his. Their lips meet as he runs his fingers through her hair, freeing it of the braid she had set it aside in. There's a softness to Sibylle that Erzsi always lacked, an effortlessness and sheer femininity the Hungarian never had. More than that there's that something Austrian he loves because it makes his heart sing out uncontrollably, to be with someone of his country, to be with someone solely and completely his.

And this woman with her mewls of approval, and the way she pushes her body up against his as he shifts to lay atop her, only turns Roderich on more. He is careful in his touches, to care for her in a way more delicate than he's ever been with a virgin before. He even allows himself to be rolled onto his back so that Sibylle could lay on him and feel his body, acclimating herself with a man's form. Her blushes are deep but beautiful, her lips falling everywhere just as his had across her now-bare chest and stomach.

She screams when he takes her precious virginity, her arms tight around his neck. Roderich kisses the tears, licking up their salty water. He's slow with the roll of his hip, murmuring words of devotion into her ear, until he finishes with a quiet groan. Sibylle, still seemingly in shock, lays beneath him blinking up at the ceiling.

"Hannah Sibylle Rose," the Austrian nation murmurs, "marry me?"

The woman nods before swallowing and whispering with a tight voice, "There is something I must tell you first."

* * *

It takes a while to settle the house just outside Vienna, far enough from the city to be the country but not far enough away for Roderich to escape the political shackles that hold him. They celebrate Sibylle's twenty-eighth birthday with a small garden party and even Francis comes out for the occasion with his sister.

After that Roderich often finds himself pacing the halls of a house built years before his mistress was born, as if the walls might give him advice. As if the walls might tell him what to do.

No one could help him now, save perhaps Sibylle whom he loved but could not marry.

Fate was forever too cruel.

* * *

Her image swims in his vision, Roderich blinking in the low light of his bedroom. Sibylle shushes him when he tries to speak, kissing the corner of his mouth carefully before wiping his forehead with a wet cloth.

"All the nations are feeling this one," she whispers into his ear. "I replied to their messages, so they wouldn't know how poor your health is."

The Austrian tries to nod but it makes him dizzy, so instead he goes back to sleep.

* * *

"The chancellor is a fool," he moans as Sibylle pushes him in his wheelchair through their garden, birds annoyingly singing happy tune. Roderich would like to get his gun out and shoot them. "Do you hunt?"

"I used to," his mistress replies as she pushes him to the top of a hill. The grass rolls lazily up and down before them and if the day was clear enough, the Austrian nation likes to think he could see all the way to Hungary. "My father had a hunting dog, for scaring the birds up. My brother would go with Francis, to shoot larger game."

"Would you like to kill all these songbirds chirping for me then?" the man says grumpily, now imagining setting the forrest on fire. If there were no trees they'd go away, wouldn't they?

Arms wrap about his neck, a warm cheek pressing against his. "This will all calm soon enough," Sibylle mutters. "It has to, there's been too much chaos for too long. The government will settle, won't it?"

Roderich doesn't answer, wrapping an arm around his mistress's neck. He doesn't want to admit his fear of what was happening to his north.

* * *

In the meeting room in Vienna the pair of Austrians sit stiffly: Sibylle was clearly nervous by what was going on; Roderich felt more impassive about such events. Ludwig paces at the window, Gilbert sitting across the table from them with their forms.

The Prussian holds the two forms up. "Think this is funny?"

"A little," Roderich says with a blank expression. Sibylle squeezes his hand beneath the table.

Red eyes go back and forth, sizing each of them up, before Gil shakes his head. "You could get her killed," he says through gritted teeth, "marking down that you're both Jewish. To what, prove a point?"

"I have never had a problem with the Jews," Roderich says which is only half a lie. He knows there is a long and tortured history of Jews in Austria, as there is in all of Europe; he still remembers how Antonio had lost himself during the Spanish Inquisition. But Roderich himself, as a man with his own thoughts and opinions, meant it. Anyone who could believe in something so completely, is someone he could respect.

"Ha. Ha." Gilbert, in his impressively cut Nazi uniform, rises before stepping to his younger brother. They speak in hushed whispers before Gil takes over pacing at the window as Ludwig sits.

"I will get you two more forms," the German says and the Austrian nation notes how the man's eyes are cast down, refusing to look at them. "You will fill them out properly, and we will never speak of this incident again. Understood?"

"No." All three men's eyes snap to Sibylle, her face calm though her legs beside Roderich are bouncing. "What reason is there for such documents? What wrong have we committed?"

Slowly the Austrian turns his head, intrigued by the look in Ludwig's eyes. They're wide in shock before narrowing at being challenged. Then there's a thought, a flicker of a thing, for just a moment.

He suspects.

"See Ludwig," Roderich interrupted in his even voice despite feeling a racing in his chest. "Even the womenfolk can see how ludicrous this all is. And I would have thought your brother would have taught you how to not be swayed by political parties in your country, but perhaps I had hoped for too much from too little."

The German sneers before standing, knocking his chair over. "You two will fill in the forms or I will personally deal with you." Those ice blue eyes fall over Sibylle before resting on Roderich. "Good day." Gil follows his brother out the room.

In the hallway a woman in uniform stops, peering in, but Roderich looks away.

* * *

Sibylle races about, throwing things into one of the two suitcases the Austrian had pulled down for her. "You need not rush so," Roderich whispers from his spot sitting at the end of the bed. "We must wait for Oxenstierna to get here first."

"What if they come before that?" the woman asks desperately, clutching a dress to her chest as she steps to him. "For me?"

Roderich rises slowly, walking to Sibylle and taking the dress from her hand to drop on the floor. His hands hold the sides of her face as he looks her in those impossibly gray eyes, making sure her attention is all on him.

"Is that why," he asks, "your family left Austria?" She nods.

"With war and the emperor growing old, my father feared for the Jews of Vienna," Sibylle admits. "We did not tell the French government when we arrived; I admitted the truth to Francis only after many months."

Roderich nods. "I want you to remember something for me, Hannah Sibylle Rose: swear to me you will."

"I will," the woman says desperately. She could have been nineteen again, not thirty-eight, with that ever-present strength.

"Remember," the Austrian breathes, "that I never once cared that you were Jewish. That I loved you for you, just as you loved me for me."

Sibylle nods.

* * *

At the station Roderich boards the train with them, having been summoned to Berlin anyway. Sibylle stares out the window the whole time as the two men settle their bags in, Roderich sitting beside his mistress while Berwald Oxenstierna sits across from them.

The train pulls away. "I must offer my thanks again, Sir," the woman whispers, "for what you are doing for me." The Swede makes a grunt.

"'s nothing. I owed your master, anyway."

"For what?" Her eyebrows have risen by now though she does not look away from the countryside; Roderich knows she is trying to commit all of Austria to memory. He imagines a young Hannah Sibylle doing the same, settled between her brother and mother while her father hid any traces of their Jewish roots deep within their bags.

"Many years ago," Roderich replies, "I helped Oxenstierna meet his lover during a battle, in which they were on opposite sides." The large man grunts again. "I hope you enjoyed your time in union with him."

Sea green eyes stare into the Austrian's soul but the man says nothing.

* * *

As they pull into Berlin Oxenstierna steps out of the cabin, allowing Roderich and Sibylle to say goodbye privately.

"I don't want you to go," she cries quietly. "Come with us, please!"

"I cannot." Roderich kisses each of her hands before pulling his mistress close to kiss. Never in all his centuries had he had a mistress like this one: the ones who were nations incarnate always felt the tug of their countries, trying to pull away from Austria, though Roderich had learned how to suppress that in them without their knowledge; the mortals were either kept for such a little period of time they weren't told the truth, used and then forgotten if they could not keep a conversation as Roderich wanted, or else precious and dear but never quite what the once-powerful man wanted.

Sibylle was young; she still is. And yet despite that hers was always an old soul, like Roderich's. She never tried to be Erzsi, never tried to be anything to entice him or keep his attention. Instead Sibylle was Sibylle, with messy hair and a tendency to smile, with hope and ideas and belief in the goodness of man that long ago died in Roderich. She was quiet prayers in a language the Austrian would never come to know on Friday nights, or quiet moans in bed as they made love. She blew with the winds of fate just as he did, because what use was there in fighting what you could not stop? Sibylle always understood that, that it was much better to conserve yourself for what you could change so that you would have the strength to do what few others could when the time came.

And that was why Roderich was letting her go free.

"I will always love you," Sibylle whispers against his lips. "When this is all over, will you still want me? Will you still love me?"

"I will always want you, need you, love you." Roderich kisses her again, one last time. "You will always be my mistress. Now let me go so that we may both survive this day, Sibylle Rose."

Their eyes do not meet as he leaves.

* * *

Ludwig, clearly annoyed at Francis's sense of rebellion, leaves the newly conquered nation to Roderich's care.

"Where is she?" the Frenchman immediately hisses in his ear, pulling the Austrian to him.

Roderich shakes his head and Francis understands the sign.

"Do you still?" he asks. The « love her » is not necessary.

Roderich nods.

* * *

The windows are all thrown open to get some air into the house. Roderich really didn't spend enough time here, always either in Vienna or traveling between other capitals. This house was nearly a century old now; if these walls could talk.

He hums to himself as he cleans, like Erzsi once did. With any luck soon the Eastern Bloc would let her go, the Hungarian returning to his arms, no more Iron Curtain between them. The immortal man had high hopes for the 1980s.

There's a knocking at the door as he reenters the house from the back garden. "Yes?" Roderich calls out. Few people knew of his house here; anyone who had managed to find it had to be someone he was close with. "Hello, who is–"

He stops dead in his track, mouth open, as the old woman at the door smiles kindly. "Hello Roderich my love."

"Sibylle." His feet take him to her mindlessly, Roderich studying the lines of her face, the sag of her skin, the white of her once-black hair and the gray still strong in her eyes. "Sibylle," he sighs again, not sure what else to say.

* * *

On the back porch they drink tea, torte between them. "Still the same as I remember it tasting," his companion says.

"There are a few things in life," Roderich sighs, "that never change."

"Too bad I wasn't one of them," Sibylle quips and there is nothing bitter in her tone, nothing to indicate that she despises him.

The Austrian nation takes her hand on the table, linking their fingers together. "Stay here, with me," he whispers. "I will push you through the garden. I will help you out of bed, butter your bread, serve your tea." The woman laughs lightly.

"Those things were all my job, never yours."

"Let them be mine now Sibylle. Let me– let me marry you," he suggests. The old woman raises an eyebrow, just as she always has, at that.

"I thought you could not marry without your country's permission."

"They changed the rules," he whispers. "We each have one marriage of choice." Originally Roderich had hoped that Erzsi would marry him, but–

"No, Roderich Edelstein," Sibylle sighs. "I see it in your eyes, I know how the Austrian people try to still help the Hungarians: it wouldn't be right. I am eighty-seven now; marriage is no longer for me."

"You devoted so much of yourself to me," Roderich reasons, "that I feel responsible, as if I robbed you of your youth and heart. I would not mind at all."

Sibylle smiles a mischief smile. "It does not matter anyway, dearest, so do not fret; I have been telling people since I entered Sweden with Berwald, all those years ago, that I am Mrs. Edelstein."

And at that they both laugh, long and hard and loudly. Roderich throws his head back, smiling like he so rarely does, amused like he never is. That was Sibylle, right there, all Sibylle with ideas in her head and the gumption to do something about it. He hopes she stays, he really does, so that he could start to repay the debt he owes her. When he was weak she cared for him; when he grew stronger she kept him grounded; and when he became lost in the turmoil of war she stayed with him until she could no longer.

Hannah Sibylle Rose, Roderich has often mused in the years between that train in Berlin and now, was very much like her name. She was graceful, in her prayers and in her actions. She was a diviner of truths, a well of knowledge that never dried up. But mostly she was as beautiful as a rose, with thorns that could hurt but could also protect.

But to be Sibylle Edelstein, to bear his name willingly, was perhaps the truest name to call her by.

"Oh Mrs. Edelstein," Roderich jokes. "That which we once called a Rose by any other name still smells vaguely of Francis Bonnefoy's interference."


End file.
